Kaiyzen Group

Mavericks is supposed to kick off tomorrow here on the west coast.  The annual surf event has been waiting for the right conditions and a pacific storm has been pushing a huge swell our way over the past couple days.

Speaking of swells, seems that two of the video streaming startups, Kyte and Ustream are getting ready for a big push with some new announcements and most likely some new years growth.

TechCrunch is posting that Ustream will be releasing a new iPhone application that will allow users to stream any Ustream channel direct to their devices.  Michael gives the good idea of wathcing the inauguration via Ustream if you are out and about and can’t be near a television.  If Ustream can get some serious content partnerships going it will make a nice solution somewhat putting them inline with place shifter Sling minus the hardware and DVR.

Speaking of content partnerships, Kyte has a HUGE one just being announced.  Billboard is announcing that Kyte and UMG are partnering up to stream content over Kyte’s system.  Universal alludes that its artists will be using Kyte to communicate in a more personal way with their fans showing behind the scenes clips they are recording.  If Kyte has similar success to that of SayNow it should mean a chunk of new users to their site.

Maybe Kyte and SayNow can partner up, one providing the video and the latter providing the audio/sms.

(updated)

Seems even Qik has some news tonight.  They are sponsoring an online show at Sundance with streaming various people peroforming tasks over a 24 hr period.  It is being organized by Aston Kutcher.

Bit of a delay on this one.., still nursing my CES hangover and haven’t been writing too much.

I covered some MS stuff while at the show and posted a write up over at GigaOm’s NewTeeVee site.

The title is a bit dramatic after going through one of their editors, but basically Microsoft is really kind of silently mounting a solid standing in the living room by battling on two fronts, one direct to consumers with Xbox, the other via the service providers and Mediaroom.

Break time on the writing front for me.  In the meantime I did a writeup for the NewTeeVee folks covering my trip to the TelcoTV show in Anaheim.

http://newteevee.com/2008/11/18/telcotv-report-iptv-hoping-for-a-big-2009/

There is a lot going on, hopefully I will get some time over the holiday weekend to catch up and get some posts.

Still on my road show trip for work, currently stationed in wonderful Sydney.  Besides being a beautiful city it also holds the distinction of being right in Mr. Murdochs locale for wheelin and dealin.

I was reading through The Daily Telegraph at breakfast that is delivered free to me each day here at the hotel and came across a tiny little article that was pretty interesting.

MySpace Australia launched an online television channel with broadcasting a concert of Death Cab For Cutie.

MySpace has teamed up with BBC and others to bring original content to the Australian market.  They are also including content from Channel V.., one of the big pay for cable networks down here.

This is a very nice move for them and will be interesting to see what moves they try to make back in North America.  Media works a bit diferent down here so I dont forsee this happening right away but will eventually happen in some capacity.

My friend Mike Boland who is a Sr. Analyst at the Kelsey Group is featured in a podcast interview in a Wall Street Journal article covering online video and small businesses using it to promote their products online.

Mike does a great job of pointing out some of the players focusing on the SMB online advertising space such as SpotRunner and IAC’s CitySearch site adding video to their local profile ad packages.

2008 is going to be just the beginning of a huge uptick online video viewership and ad spending.  2006 saw the first major increase in viewership of online video thanks to YouTube and other video sites.

Lately more and more episodes of TV shows are going online from the major studios and the once the public launch of Hulu happens, the Fox/NBCU site online video venture, that will steps things up one more level.

Another factor that is getting a lot of mention is the writers strike.  As the strike is prolonging media buyers will start to rethink their budget spend for later in 2008 and 2009 pushing the online totals even higher.  The upfront for the fall saw $9.1 Billion in TV spending committed.  As marketers finalize their ‘08 and start to plan for their ‘09 budgets they will be considering online video more as more people start to embrace it and interact with it more consistently.  A study from The Conference Board-TNS found that for the third quarter of 2007 16% of US households watched a full television episode online.  That number was double from a year ago.

All of this is just further steps towards the transformation of the digital home.  Look for a lot more stories and action is the the online video category.

Here is another posting of Mike’s from the Kelsey Group blog talking about local media and how online news and video is effecting traditional forms of local media.